


Missing You When You're Still Here

by mostlikelydefinentlymad



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M, M/M, TJLC | The Johnlock Conspiracy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-10
Updated: 2015-04-10
Packaged: 2018-03-22 04:28:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3715042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mostlikelydefinentlymad/pseuds/mostlikelydefinentlymad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John isn't happy with how his life is going, after the wedding and old wounds are reignited when he sees Sherlock with Janine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Missing You When You're Still Here

John massaging his hand at his own wedding, already missing the war, already missing Sherlock and he hasn’t even completely lost him yet. He’s sitting between the two people he loves and missing one so bad that it physically aches and he’s within reaching distance but too far away for comfort and he’s trying to make this feeling go away but it won’t, it never will and there’s too many people taking up too much space and they don’t belong here. He doesn't belong here.

It makes him so uncomfortable that he forces himself to smile, to dance, to turn his body into a solid block of ice that hurls hateful words at Sherlock “D _on’t know how those rumors started_ ” he says with a smile that he doesn’t quite feel but he needs Sherlock to hurt too. It’s not fair that he should feel this way on his own. Sure he made this tangled mess but Sherlock helped and so help him, he won’t come out of this wedding unscathed, until they’re both bleeding, until they both realize things might never be the same and they have only themselves to blame.

He needs him to _feel what I feel, taste the betrayal_ but only one month later the words still taste bitter on his tongue and he’s dreaming of the man who brought him back to life, who reached down and rescued the drowning man and made his life worth living. 

It all makes him furious, he shouldn’t be here in this bed in this flat that never felt like home, dreaming of Sherlock and wishing he wasn’t so far away. How dare he continue living his life like none of this ever happened, probably having the time of his life while John rots in a prison of his own making. _H_ _ow dare he._ It’s easier to seethe with rage than to succumb to the sadness, easier to blame someone else and take all that blinding pain out on an innocent person and he’s starting to wonder who he even is anymore and he doesn’t like who hes become.

Like something out of a horror screen, Sherlock is there and he’s skin and bones and greasy hair. He’s calling himself someone he’s not and claiming it was all for a case, _a case John_. Of course. Because he couldn’t possibly care enough about me to sink this low, John thinks to himself. That’s Sherlock, always thinking about himself.

Why now? Why did he have to resurface now and _here_ of all places. She’s waiting in the car and it’s all wrong and he can’t even focus right now. _H_ _ow did things get so fucked up?  
_

They’re in the lab and the man he’d raged at earlier is inside of his head, reading his thoughts and prodding into places he kept tucked away; places that should never see the light of day. He hates this, every second of it and his skin is crawling. He could walk away right now, never look back. He could do that but _why_. He’d only be hurting himself if he did and he knows it because Sherlock is like a drug, he’s in his veins, inescapable. 

 

Back to 221B, the place he used to call home, back to the bottom of the staircase where he stood and swore he heard a ghost playing Sherlock’s violin once upon a time…forever ago.

 

He moved his chair, of course he did. He’s removing John from his life, bit by painful bit and he knows it. It cuts like a knife and why should it? He has a life now, a brand new beginning so why should he mourn the loss of a former life? It makes no sense, there’s no logic in this but he can’t deny how he feels.

 

 _Shes_ there, Janine…wearing _his_ shirt, sleeping in his bed, living in their flat.

 

No, can’t think like that. _He’s not mine to claim, he never was_. He knows this but his gut is boiling and simmering with old wounds and liquid fear. This is how it feels to be a ghost, he thinks to himself; to pass through rooms unnoticed, to pass through hearts unscathed. 

She's kissing him and suddenly it’s all too much. _She doesn’t belong on his chair, on his lips, her fingers in his hair, her place in his life...she doesn’t belong here._

 

_Laugh, just…force yourself to smile to laugh to pretend like you’re not falling apart on the inside. Fake it, they’ll never know._

 

Why should he have the satisfaction of knowing he feels anything at all for him? And John does. He always has and has fought it because _he doesn’t feel things like that_ but still he's here in this flat and Sherlock is looking at her like he might actually be human and apparently John just wasn't what his heart desired after all.

 

 _Dammit._ Damn it all he tried not to fall for this man but it was like trying not to breathe when your lungs are starving for air. He saw those eyes on the first day and never had a chance. 

 

I have a girlfriend _,_ he says and the words sound clumsy on his lips, like they don’t quite belong, like the smell of her perfume in the bathroom, her shirt on his bed.

 

_Smile. Smile goddammit. Force it out, you were once a soldier you know how to fake it when you need to._

 

The room is spinning out of control and he’s talking about something else but all John can think about all he can see is her…her everywhere where he should’ve been.

 

 **DINNER**.

 

_We’ll have dinner like good friends should, that’s what friends do, right? We’ll pretend to be just like everyone else for one night and I’ll be so fucking happy and you’ll be the one who hurts. We’re always flinging arrows at one another, you and I, trading jabs neither one willing to back down from a fight but too terrified to admit we’re on the same side._

Sherlock finds it absurd that John is blathering on about dinner, surely there’s more important matters at hand. 

 

 _Of course he has already forgotten_ , _of course_. Moving on now, talking about the case and John is trying desperately to focus because it feels like this might be important but it’s hard. It’s hard to stay anchored to this moment, to be in the same room with him, to not throw something as hard as he can and scream…scream at the top of his lungs because _it’s_ _not okay! It’s just **not**. _

 

But that would be weakness. Alright, time to be John Watson ex army medic.

 

Stoic face ahead, _lets do this. I can do this_. _Breathe. Breathe_. _FOCUS. The past is the past and feelings are only childish notions and he can’t change the future just like he can’t take back the past and can’t take back the words he spewed when he was angry, that time that Sherlock waltzed back into his life and undid everything_. 

 

_…time to be John Watson, Captain in the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers._


End file.
